Okay, so what's up with WiMax?

Don't get us wrong, we're all about it, but we'd be lying if we called
WiMax's (802.16 for all you IEEE-nerds) performance to date in
the market-adoption sense anthing but an impossibly slow, lumbering disappointment. It's become notorious for missing
dates, pumping out some seriously distracting hype, and now, apparently their previously scheduled first round of
official product testing and certification will be delayed by another half year—that means the first generation WiMax
products won't be around until late 2005; knowing WiMax, we'll guesstimate Spring 2006, at least. What it all means for
the long-distance high-speed wireless standard is that even with the all the WiMax-Forum's serious efforts to rally
people behind their technology, if they can't deliver in a timely manner they're going to find themselves properly
ignored. And despite our better judgement as for its greater intended purpose, it could actually wind up
finding its niche as a backhaul medium like many are predicting, which could possibly kill WiMax; because of the way
Intel is positioning the technology, if it doesn't get picked up by a broad consumer base we can totally see it getting
discarded to the heap of failed standards of yore, backhaul or not. Not to mention facing off against ever broadening
and cheapening 2.5 and 3G data networks in America,
and HSDPA should be a reminder that every second counts in
next-gen wireless, and WiMax is wasting precious time.